COTPA ENFORCEMENT

The Government is committed to stronger enforcement of the revised COTPA laws. As such, a broad number of officials have been given the responsibility of imposing and collecting fines for smokers and managers who breach the law.

Officers authorised to impose fines apart from the police include; heads of public and private institutions, human resource managers, hospital administrators, university, college and school headmasters and teachers, airports, train and bus station controllers, and library and postal service administrators.

Fines for individual smokers will be up to 200 INR, however fines for public places managers will be the sum total of all the breaches in their jurisdiction. Therefore, if ten smokers are found to be breaching the law in any public place, the management is liable for a 2000 INR fine (200 INR x 10 smokers).